Web development - License CSS/Markup/Code
-
In development of a website, is it typical for the developer to retain rights to the CSS, Markup and other Coding? If so, why is this done?
-
They want to keep ownership so they have the classes, framework or whatever for reuse for future clients, increasing their profits. But I think that is slightly different to having a licence agreement and as you say with that model you could become prone to unreasonable fees.
-
If he's got a clause like that in his contract, it may be indicative of broader issues looming. You may want to reconsider developers.
-
Hi Demetrios,
As the other replies have said, no, it's definitely not typical. I would be a little concerned if this is a typical contract clause for this developer.
Thanks,
Greg -
Another point, how much of that code is learnt from or copied from other sources? Would he even have the right to call it his own?
-
Imagine getting a house build and then signing a rental agreement??
I build complied sites in MVC using visual studio, when I click publish, it compiles my code and produces a website on the server. If you wanted to make any changes at a later date you would need the Visual Studio project, I always give clients a copy of this project so they can do so.
-
Yea that's what I figured. I haven't paid anything to the developer so will wait for his response to removing that clause from the contract. The contract states he will license it to me, which makes no sense to me. Why would I paid you to program something for me, then it gets licensed to me. Then at anytime you can stop the licensing and hold my site hostage. Makes no sense..
-
I have been a computer programmer / web developer for over 20 years and no it is not.
I would tell them to take a hike, if you have already passed over any cash then I would ask for it back , if they did not tell you this before taking the money.
-
yep, if you paid for it you would like to own the copy right. If they keep it, then they can resell it to anyone legally, which I'm sure you would not be happy about.
-
Hi Demetrios,
The webdev companies I've worked with didn't posses the rights to the code. We always claim ownership of the source code and all others properties in every project.
Regards,
Pieter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Items 30 - 50", however this is not accurate. Articles/Pages/Products counts are not close to this, products are 100+, so are the articles. We would want to either hide this or correct this.
We are running into this issue where we see items 30 -50 appear underneath the article title for google SERP descriptions . See screenshot or you can preview how its appearing in the listing for the site here: https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=5I5fX939L6qxytMPh_el4AQ&q=site%3Adarbyscott.com&oq=site%3Adarbyscott.com&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoICAAQsQMQgwE6BQgAELEDOgIIADoECAAQCjoHCAAQsQMQClDYAljGJmC9J2gGcAB4AIABgwOIAYwWkgEIMjAuMy4wLjKYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6sAEA&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjd_4nR_ejrAhWqmHIEHYd7CUwQ4dUDCAk&uact=5 Items 30 - 50", however this is not accurate and we are not sure what google algorithm is counting. . Articles/Pages/Products counts are not close to this, products are 100+, so are the articles. Anyone have any thoughts on what google is pulling for the count and how to correct this? We would want to either hide this or correct this. view?usp=sharing
Web Design | | Raymond-Support0 -
My news site not showing in "In the news" list on Google Web Search
I got a news website (www.tapscape.com) which is 6 years old and has been on Google News since 2012. However, whenever I publish a news article, it never shows up "In the news" list on Google Web Search. I have already added the schema.org/NewsArticle on the website and have checked it if it's working or not on Google structured data testing tool. I see everything shows on on the structured data testing tool. The site already has a news sitemap (http://www.tapscape.com/news-sitemap.xml) and has been added to Google webmaster tools. News articles show perfectly fine in the News tab, but why isn't the articles being shown on "In the news" list on the Google web search? My site has a strong backlink background already, so I don't think I need to work on the backlinks. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, and how can I get it to the news articles on "In the news" list. Below is a screenshot that I have attached to this question to help you understand what I mean to say. 1qoArRs
Web Design | | hakhan2010 -
Wordpress SEO/Tag plugin recommendation for sports (soccer) website
I own a Wordpress website which covers soccer in the DC MD VA area called DMV Soccer http://www.dmvsoccer.com/ We write weekly recaps where we tag a player who has scored a goal or performed well in a game. For each player, obviously, a tag is created. What I'm looking for is a plugin or solution that would allow me to tag a player, but also automatically assign a team to that player so that the team name and player's name are optimized on the individual player's tag page. So if I were to tag George Murphy on a recap, and I assign him to a team, let's say DC United. The tag page would have a title, something like: George Murphy Soccer Player for DC United and the meta description: George Murphy, soccer player from MD who players for DC United archives Or something similar, if that makes sense. Should I skip using tags and instead start assigning each player as a sub-category under each team? I'd like to try to avoid that, because not each category will be based on a player. Any suggestions in terms of existing plugins or other recommendations?
Web Design | | georgetsn1 -
Rich snippets tool/ schemer.org update?
We have a domain in the netherlands that shows stars (rich snippets) in adwords and in the organic search results. As we do the the in rich snippets test tool we see some errors as shown in the attachments, the errors are shown in review aggregate - but stars are stil shown in paid and organic search. Do we need to follow-up these errors? Do they influence ranking - or the stars in the near future? Z0fCKRW
Web Design | | remkoallertz1 -
Nav / Sitemap Question. Using a "services" page vs just linking directly to individual service page?
Okay, so our company offers video production, web design, and web marketing services. While we do offer these services individually, our goal is to get our clients to integrate these services together. Our nav is currently like so : home - about - video - web design - web marketing - blog - contact Now I've seen businesses and agencies also use a nav with a "services" button instead of listing out their service offerings (if they have more than 1, like us). The services button usually links to a category page or has a drop down with links to the company's individual services. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a main services page like this and linking to the individual pages off of it (video ,web design, marketing, etc). Or if we should just keep it the way we have it now (since we've already got some page authority on the individual service pages). I know this may not be the most important aspect of our site and we may be over-thinking it but any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
CSS styling help needed
I'm hoping that to someone experienced this is a quick fix, but it may be a pain and a rat's nest of code. Five or so years ago, I designed my brother's website at https://www.argentdata.com/index.html. I built it off of the Mollio theme (http://www.mollio.org/), and used templates in Dreamweaver, so it's not in a CMS. It's not a work of art, and there are some issues with it, but it's served him fairly well. Longer-term it needs a redesign, but right now I'm asking about just one aspect of the existing design. There are two parts to the site - the plain HTML site, and the osCommerce store that's under the purchase tab. If you go to http://www.argentdata.com/catalog/ you'll see that the osCommerce store is full width, while the navigation header copied over from the main site is 1200 pixels wide and centered. If you're on a wide monitor, it looks weird. What he'd like to do: Make the main site align to the left, both the content and navigation, and make the navigation left aligned for the osCommerce portion. He figures this is the easier way to do things, rather than try to muck with osCommerce CSS (that also has some merged CSS from the Mollio theme) and get it to center. Does anyone have a fairly simple solution that can make the navigation bar look good on osCommerce? Either the above of making everything left aligned, or some other solution simple we haven't thought of? Thanks!
Web Design | | KeriMorgret0 -
Which is the Best Web Hosting Company?
Which web hosting company is the best to use for SEO purposes? Also which company has the best cost and value?
Web Design | | bronxpad1 -
Ecommerce web site with too many internal links
Hi, We're using Magento CE 1.4.0.1 for our ecommerce web site with a fairly flat navigation system i.e. 9 major categories display across the top menu that when you roll over display 2-20 sub categories (which take you to a groups of similar products) and then individual product pages. The categories and sub categories are available to click on as part of a dynamic Html menu system on each page. Each page also shows a small number of related products. This linking structure seems fairly standard and yet Seomoz throws up the error message, "Too Many On-page links" for most pages on our site. Do I need to really worry about this? Is there much can be done to improve this on an ecommerce web site with a large catalogue of products? I've looked at the Knowledge Base but I don't feel the existing responses adequately address the issue for ecommerce sites.
Web Design | | languedoc0